Stem Cell Researchers Awarded $20 Million

A husband and wife team of stem cell researchers, at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), along with a private company, have been awarded $20 million of a $150 million grant authorized by the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine. The couple, Aileen Anderson and Brian Cummings and the company, StemCells, Inc. of Newark, California, hope to begin human testing of a treatment for spinal-cord injuries in the neck region. The treatment involves injecting human neural stem cells into the neck area.

According to a July 27 report in the Orange County Register, the cells, which are capable of transforming themselves based on cues from the body, could migrate to the injured area and repair the protective sheaths, known as myelin, around nerve cells. If the treatment works as expected, it would restore movement and body control for patients with debilitating injuries.

The treatment has the potential to allow the paralyzed to walk again. That is what Anderson, in her “wildest dreams” said she would like to see take place in a clinical trial. “But, ” she says, “what you’re likely going to see for any spinal cord injury is much more incremental improvement in function.”

Anderson and Cummings are among a group of stem-cell scientists at UCI’s Sue & Bill Gross Stem Cell Research Center which has already had stem cell successes. A treatment it developed for chronic spinal cord injury, along with StemCells Inc., is now being tested on patients in Switzerland and was recently shown to be safe for the first group of patients to receive it.

StemCells Inc. grows the human neural stem cells from donated brain tissue of surgically aborted fetuses. The company has had another recent success involving UCI researchers. The company restored memory and brain function in mice bred to model the effects of Alzheimer’s disease. That achievement could eventually be translated into treatments for humans with the disease.